Hillary to Fox News: Obama Isn’t JFK or MLK

Posted on Jan 8, 2008

The media may be falling under the sway of Barack Obama, but Hillary Clinton is fed up with the idea that his campaign is somehow historic, and she’s had more than enough of those comparisons to JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. just “because they gave great speeches.”

New York Times:

Later, during an appearance in Salem, Mrs. Clinton refined her remarks on Fox:

“You know, today Senator Obama used President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to criticize me. He basically compared himself to our greatest heroes because they gave great speeches.

“President Kennedy was in Congress for 14 years. He was a war hero. He was a man of great accomplishments and readiness to be president. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a movement. He was gassed. He was beaten. He was jailed. And he gave a speech that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever written in America, the ‘I have a dream’ speech.

“And then he worked with President Johnson to get the civil rights laws passed, because the dream couldn’t be realized until finally it was legally permissible for people of all colors and backgrounds and races and ethnicities to be accepted as citizens.

“I’m running for president because I believe that there is not a contradiction between experience and change.”